It is said that conservatism in politics is the appropriate counterpart of a generally conservative disposition in respect of human conduct: to be reformist in business, in morals or in religion and to be conservative in politics is represented as being inconsistent.

Over the past months, the Centre for Policy Studies has developed an increasing interest in the affairs of central and Eastern Europe. In 1990 John Redwood, now Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, wrote us an excellent paper entitled The Democratic Revolutions.

In its recent white paper education and training for the 21st Century, the government sets out its admirable intention to encourage vocational education of the highest quality alongside traditional academic education.

The government has decided to end the telephone duopoly. The duopoly was established when, after privatising British Telecom in the early ‘80s, the Government licensed Mercury to compete with BT in providing ordinary telephone service, technically described as public switched network service.

The days of the LEAs as most of them still operate, are or should be numbered. They must no longer play the dominant role in deciding the range of schools, or the nature of the education provided, in any area.

To judge from the arrangements for assessment at the age of seven – recently published for in the National Curriculum – one might suppose that the intention of the Education Reform Act was being fulfilled.